Ninety: The Twin Dark-Wind Ladies!

Even though the Life Foundation’s security arrangements were deeply flawed, the earlier act of prying every symbiote and host out and dumping them all into one room had still triggered the alarms.

By the time he stepped out of the room, a squad of armed soldiers had already closed in around him.

“Drop your weapon! Hands behind your head and kneel on the ground!” shouted a man who seemed to hold a fairly high rank. Before he could finish, however, a dagger had already driven clean through his shoulder.

Batman once told us that no matter how vile our enemies may be, we must not kill them. But we can break every bone in their bodies, cut off their hands and feet, and so long as they do not die, that will do.

In just two minutes and forty seconds, a fully armed security team had been smashed flat by Jos, not one of them able to stand again.

Some were merely crippled for the moment; the more unruly ones, crippled for life. If he had not worried about killing them, Jos could have finished the whole thing in under thirty seconds.

The Life Foundation’s security personnel might count as elite soldiers in the eyes of the outside world, but in the presence of true power, they were no more than cannon fodder.

By current standards, Jos’s strength could already place him among the third-string Earth-born heroes in the Marvel world, so dealing with these ordinary guards, who were not even fit to be called second-rate, took hardly any effort at all.

These people were no problem for Jos, but he did not spare a single one.

By his estimate, Blackie and Tatsumaki should be arriving about now. During their battle with Carnage, Jos had no intention of letting these people interfere.

Yet even after Jos had left the symbiote experimentation laboratory, he did not notice that among the half-dead hosts, there was a man whose legs were crippled. After being taken over by a symbiote, his injuries slowly began to heal, and even his eyes suddenly snapped open.

If Ben Parker had been here, he might have recognized the man at once: the thug who had once nearly killed him during a robbery.

...

“It should be around here, right?”

Floating above the treetops, Tatsumaki studied the map Jos had left for her.

At her question, a tiny little head made of Blackie’s body surfaced from her collarbone. After a careful look at the map, she nodded. “Mm. Can’t read it. Don’t know.”

“Then why are you nodding?!”

Tatsumaki was genuinely shocked.

When she had first heard Jos say the two of them were going to carry out a mission, she had thought Blackie must be some deeply hidden expert. Yet within just a few minutes of contact, she had realized this woman was nothing more than a deadbeat shut-in with a clown’s soul.

“And why do you keep hiding inside my body?”

After putting the map away, Tatsumaki continued flying forward, grumbling all the while.

“What else can I do? I can’t fly. If I walked on the ground, I’d be way too slow,” Blackie said without a care.

“Tch... it still feels disgusting. Another person living inside your body and all that.”

“If you’re worried about that, I can temporarily turn into tentacle-suit mode. Jos said before that girls really like that, didn’t he?”

“Don’t go learning weird things from him!”

“Oh? Then do your best and keep flying.”

Blackie clicked her tongue, then poked half her head and two tiny hands out from behind Tatsumaki, stuffing fried chicken into her mouth and washing it down with a gulp of cola.

“Mmm. I used to only like raw meat, but now I’ve discovered that comfort food for shut-ins really is the best.”

“Hey, the fat you’re eating is going to end up on me in the end, isn’t it?” Tatsumaki had not eaten a thing, yet already felt completely stuffed.

“Forget it. I don’t have that function. Besides, even if I could pile the fat onto your chest, he’d definitely make you do it again.”

Blackie mercilessly crushed Tatsumaki’s fantasy.

“...I’m going to break every limb of that guy called Carnage...” For some reason, Tatsumaki’s expression suddenly darkened.

Although their travel speed was a little slower than Jos’s, they were floating through the air, and before long the two of them had reached the outskirts of the Life Foundation.

Most of the already weak defensive forces had been drawn away by Jos, and the pair almost swaggered right over the top of the wall. No one noticed them at all, and they slipped in without incident.

“Huh? Why is everyone already lying down here?”

Tatsumaki sneaked a glance through the window, only to discover that the entire hall held no resistance whatsoever. Not a single person was even standing.

“Probably that guy’s doing, by the look of it. To be honest, if he hadn’t said he had something else to do, I suspect he wouldn’t even have left Carnage for us.”

“Uh...”

Just having barely begun to master her own power, Tatsumaki once again felt the true extent of the strength that existed in this world.

“So, what exactly is your relationship with that Carnage guy? I heard you’re from the same race?”

Seeing there was no danger, Tatsumaki casually unleashed her telekinesis, shattering the glass to pieces before bringing Blackie into the building.

“Yeah, same race... He’s the leader, while I’m the most failed one in our species.” Once inside, Blackie also jumped down from Tatsumaki and took on the form of a black-skinned loli, looking toward some distant point.

She could feel it. Carnage was there.

“Then what did he mean by saying Carnage was supposed to have been born from you?”

“Who knows. There are plenty of inexplicable things about him. The most inexplicable of all is his brain. He always says things nobody can understand.”

“Fair enough... Someone’s coming!”

While they had been chatting, Tatsumaki suddenly heard a faint sound of footsteps. Her right hand jerked forward in a grab, and a wall was yanked straight out of place, revealing several guards behind it.

“Then let’s begin.”

Blackie pouted. Although she had undergone systematic modification, she only had a superficial understanding of Jos’s affairs, at most knowing that he possessed many strange abilities.

“Still, this works out. I’ve always wanted to try it too—the feeling of beating up that arrogant bastard.” Dark fluid gathered into twin blades in her hands. Blackie’s gaze settled on the men ahead of her, and then she lunged forward at speed.

The guards quickly opened fire, but the bullets that struck Blackie passed straight through her body, as though they had hit a pool of liquid.

As for the bullets flying toward Tatsumaki, the sight was even stranger: one and all, they simply halted in midair.